


what's the end (with you and me)

by JunkerJackrabbit



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Implied/Referenced Torture, Medical Experimentation, Soft Gay Content, Swearing, Terrible People
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-27 09:31:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18192818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JunkerJackrabbit/pseuds/JunkerJackrabbit
Summary: A collection of short Moira fics written for Rawrkie.Currently:Moira/AnaMoira/WidowRated for potential future content





	1. shots fired, there's no turning back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rawrkie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rawrkie/gifts).



They sit out on the veranda, in the hushed quiet of the afternoon. The sun has cast the garden all in colours. Rich, verdant greens that stretch as far as the eye can see, all but masking the distant walls, overgrown in creeper and ivy, that form the boundary between the Oasis home and the outside world. A shelter away from so many things, for both of them. Away from the hectic hustle and bustle of the city in the distance for one, the demands of the Ministries. For the other, a welcome respite from the life of a dead woman, one who should have been buried years ago when a single bullet claimed her eye but not quite her life. 

It's easy to forget all of it here, drenched in the amber-gold of the desert sun. Surrounded by the vibrant oranges, yellows, reds of so many softly-blooming flowers, the soft thrum of hummingbird wings as they dart to and fro among them on jewel-toned feathers, flickering and iridescent in the light. 

In some regards, it's a good thing that Ana Amari no longer affiliated, at least not formally, with Overwatch. Her rifle propped against the railing after a long morning of tracking a bounty through the outskirts of the desert city, snowy hair loosed from its trademark braid, she watches with warm eyes as her companion takes another slow sip from a porcelain cup. The mint tea is hot, sweetened only with a hint of honey, but no less refreshing for it. She knows, she brewed it herself. 

Overwatch certainly would have approved of her idle, easy conversation with Talon's lead medic, one Moira O'Deorain slung in a nearby chair with an almost indolent posture, looking as elegant as she does effortless even in the heat. The first three buttons of her shirt are unfastened to endure it, and there's a glimmer of gold visible near the collarbones, a fine chain that Ana knows is a concession to her, a remembrance of their younger days.

She had given it to her after all. Knows that at its end rests the amber, the one she knew, all those years ago in Egypt, nestled in a little shop off the market, must belong to the woman beside her now. A drop of amber like the desert sun, at the heart of which is captured for all time a single, fossilized firefly. It holds great meaning. More than many would expect. That Moira has kept it all this time speaks volumes.

Ana remembers wrapping it in a page torn from a book, one they used to read together in the late nights that afforded them time, on the roof of the base in Gibraltar, out on the balcony in Ilios, sheltered near the fire in Oslo when the snow was too deep and the winter too bitter for travel. When they were younger. When they were no less wild, but perhaps less wise than they are now. 

_If you are my friend_  
Little fire you will not glow  
She does not love me. 

_Alas the light cannot_  
Illuminate the shadow  
Hiding her heart. 

_Since she does not love me_  
What is the good of watching  
Fireflies burning? 

_If I sent her_  
A great cage of fireflies  
Do you think she would love me? 

_When I have mastered magic_  
I shall flicker  
In her darkened room. 

_How I would carefully climb_  
Up the sleeve of her dress  
To glimpse her face. 

_I would light the air before her_  
Wherever she went  
If she would let me.  
\- Philip Murray

All these years from then, and still she remembers. The sharp, staccato sound of three raps on the oaken door, pale knuckles that expected - no, demanded - an answer. The sharper cut of those cheekbones, the line of a jaw, a stark juxtaposition cast by the shadow and light when she opened the door, all the brittle white illumination of the fluorescent lamps in the hall of the Gibraltar base and the welcoming darkness of her private quarters.

In the doorway, it wasn't characteristic. The always tall, always poised Moira O'Deorain, for once lacking composure, an outward veneer cracked and broken open so she can see what lives beneath it, wild and curious, the gleam of one scarlet eye like blood in the streets and one blue, like an oasis she saw once in the desert, as they search for meaning in her own. Search for the meaning in a bauble, a sheet of poetry, now clenched in one slender hand until the knuckles are paler still, the gold chain slipping through those fingers. In a stone and a firefly, left in the locked drawer in Moira's office, atop files that could tear everything down, reveal too many secrets. More than they've shared.

Not more than they will. 

All these years, and still Ana remembers the way she tilted her head just so to look up at a Blackwatch operative, a doctor with hair the colour of flames, whose sharp features are dusted in freckles like the flecks of sand that cling to the hem of her jacket. And then Moira came near, so close that she could see her own gaze reflected in the others, see flickers of gold in coppery lashes. So near they shared a breath. 

"Are you coming in, _yaraea_?" she had asked, low in the space in between, tilted up only just so, until her nose brushed to the other's.  
** firefly

The slow exhalation of breath from the taller woman had not been an answer. The long fingers threaded in her hair, the firm pull of her own in a button-down shirt, drawing Moira O'Deorain one step over the threshold. The sudden kiss that found her between the shadow and the light. That was answer enough.

Years later, Ana remembers laying in the sand in an alley in Egypt, the sun fading between gold and grey and everything around her red. Red like the optics on the helmet of an enemy sniper. Like the sight that settled on her eye an instant before a bullet snapped through her skull. Red like the blood pooling beneath her, in her hair, coating the long, trembling fingers that tried to hold her together when everything else fell apart. The hands that pulled her out of the alley, out of sight, presumed dead. Left her stabilized enough for the medics to find, medics she suspects even still that Moira called, when it all so easily may have ended there for them. For her, forever.

Here in the warmth of Oasis, gilded in the glow of the desert sun, it is far from the events of Gibraltar. Of her death, her subsequent rebirth in another desert, far away. It is much different than it was once, when they were younger, perhaps more impulsive. But in all the ways it matters, it is the same. Familiar, as it used to be. A steaming kettle of tea upon the table, fragrant with mint and honey. A worn, leatherbound book in a lavender-tinted hand, its cover faded until the name can no longer be read, the black print therein faded from exposure to the light and lovingly turned pages brittle at the edges. 

Moira's other hand, slender and alabaster, rests atop the table, turns slowly until the palm is up, leaving only enough space between the fingertips for Ana to slide her own through. She sees the faint smile that curls the corner of the tall woman's lips at that, though Moira never looks up from the book. Weathered from use of a rifle, use of a knife, climbing walls and fences to enter into the places barred her, collect bounties, hers seem so different from the scientist's. 

Moira's are smooth and cool by comparison, firm as marble, but she finds no less comfort in them. They are hands skilled in their own right, both at taking apart and putting back together, sometimes better, sometimes more flawed than before. 

But the voice that reads her poetry until the sun sets holds a low lilt, flows like a current of dark water. And when the last hint of light has faded on the horizon, the heavens painted in broad strokes of cobalt and amaranthine, scattered with silver flecks of starlight, the fireflies come out to drift amidst the garden blooms. 

When the tea and the warm conversation has come and gone, Ana murmurs fondly, a question that she has asked before, "Are you coming in, _yaraea_?"  
** firefly

The answer never changes.

Even after all this time.


	2. could not escape from her beautiful breakdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Widow/Moira

Perched with an effortless grace on the cold metal of an examination table, motionless, emotionless, as her vitals are read and recorded, all in methodical process, the woman that was formerly known as Amélie Lacroix waits in silence, protests nothing. She knows well enough how this is meant to transpire, and thus endures it, answers the questions that first one councilmember asks of her, and then another, reveals nothing while Talon's own Doctor O'Deorain tends to the transcription of all manner of things.

Half of them are a lie. And Moira knows that she knows. That she has known for a long time now.

But this is not the place to reveal that discovery, anything that may indicate the truth of the matter. Not here, not now, and not under such scrutiny, the scarce handful of eyes on the vidcall that still attend it. The ones that still monitor the supposed death of Amélie Lacroix and her resurrection as the assassin known as Widowmaker. Most have stopped. The rest, she believes only attend out of hope that one day, Akande will be unseated, and she will be but another pawn on Talon's chessboard to move as they please. 

Their ignorance is bliss. And perhaps, just perhaps, they will never know that Amélie Lacroix observes them behind the indifference, that cool façade that is Widowmaker. They will never know that when her voice returned to her, it wasn't slow, but sudden in the dead of night. First a whisper, then a murmur, and then a scream in the Rialto showers, cutting through the quiescent evening like the sharp, sudden ringing of the gunshot that killed Gerard. That she scrubbed her hands raw in her effort to remove blood from them that _wasn't there_ , hadn't been since the night she laid a pillow over his head and pressed the barrel of a pistol to it. 

_One shot, one kill._

It is mystifying that it was Moira who found her there, watching the pink-tinged water spiral slowly around the drain. Who _intervened_ despite the folly of it. She recalls how the water dampened fiery hair, slicked through a black button-down in the time it took her to calm. How in that moment, long arms simply held her, the tall medic something to hold onto while she waited for the waking nightmares to fade, for the memories to stop their clamor.

She finds it the supreme irony that the moment of compassion shared with her then, came at the hands of the one who made her what she is. Or so she suspects. There are no others in Talon who could have achieved it. There are no others that run the tests, but adjust all the lines that would give them away. The reports are seamless, flawless, indicate her competence. Her complete control over emotion and form. 

The hands of Moira O'Deorain reconstruct the truth as they once reconstructed a sniper from a ballet dancer: effortlessly. How quaint she finds it that the one that keeps her secrets now, safeguards them behind endless reports of her progress, that writes so convincingly of the success of her conditioning and prevents an inevitable return to the voiceless her, the Widowmaker that was a silent field of nothingness, cold as the snow, is the same one that placed the gun in her hands and whispered once so compellingly, _Pull the trigger_.

Of all that should be a red flag, should be peculiar, alarming, even offensive to her, there is one truth that she has long made peace with in her own way. That Gerard is dead. That her hands took him from this world and that he will never return to it. That she is not, but lives somewhere between the person that was once Amélie Lacroix and the one who _is_ Widowmaker, not quite the one and not quite the other, but a culmination of all their disparate parts. 

Little will change that now. 

It is what watches behind her brilliant, shimmeringly gold eyes as the tall, Talon medic asks yet another cool, clinical question. It is the one that answers smoothly, without hesitation, the same way she pulls the trigger. With an artful precision that a ballet dancer once achieved, playing to her audience on the theatre stage. Swan Lake has never seen so much blood. 

It is the same way that she enters the keycode on the hardwood doors of a Rialto apartment hours later, steps inside to find her way down a hall tiled in black marble, lingers for a moment in the doorway of the study. A fire lit in the hearth and that same tall form seated before it in an armchair, red hair cast in gold around the ends from its warm glow. A head turns, mismatched eyes only just looking in her direction before she moves on. 

There will be whiskey in a glass in one hand, the same that took her vitals hours before. There will be whiskey in one hand, as there is wine set out on the table for her down the hall. The bottle is old, a dusty label with a family name in worn gilt peeling around the edges. The long-stemmed glass beside it is half full, will have been left to aerate while the doctor waited for her to arrive. She always does.

Red. Always red, because white reminds her of _Gerard_ in all the most unpleasant ways. Of a wedding in a French Chateau. Of a man whose face she barely remembers, whose voice has been lost to her for so long now, she wonders what it used to sound like before it was gone. It is of little consequence to one part of her. Another's has taken its place.

Slender fingers find their way around the stem of the glass to lift it, while the other hand finds the bottle to take it with her. It is a familiar route, a destination that has become familiar as what they are doing. A destination that has already been prepared, knowing she will arrive. That she always does on council days, as she used to once in the laboratory in the Talon base after hours, at first just to talk. To have the half-listening ear of the one person who knew what she was. What she was becoming.

It's the ambiance of it all that makes her start to feel human, that reaches in as she crosses the threshold into the baths and finds a scene that should be less soothing than it is. She doesn't remember when it became like this, but she does know that sometimes, when it is all just so, she can almost feel her heart beat as it should, not slowed, not cold, not forgotten within her chest. 

The wine and its glass finds a place on the rim of a marble tub, the water within tinged a milky white, strewn with flowers in vivid blue, dark and bloody scarlet. Roses, their fragrance carried on the soft steam that drifts from therein. The antique record player is in its familiar place, and once she has turned the latch on the door to lock it, she turns it on to fill the air with the soft sound of today's selection. Orchestral music, all violin and cello, the sort that she can lose herself in with the right motivation.

So she does. Sinks into the warm water and lives there, in the soft string music and the scent of roses until she forgets how long it has been since she arrived. Until the tension of the day, the scent of antiseptic and metal, the cold clinical ambiance has long faded to leave the space in her mind untangled. Once the water has cooled, the record long wound down, restarted for perhaps the sixth time, the bottle not quite emptied, but neither quite full, she withdraws from it. 

Combs through long, dark hair in the mirror, the silk robe left for her clinging to her damp skin, the stranger she sees reflected back at her less strange, becoming familiar. Her. Amélie. Widowmaker. The soft tint of blue to the skin, the shimmering gold of the eyes. The ease that no one else will see as she unlatches the door, finds her way down the hall, leaving damp footprints in her wake, and finds her way back to the study. 

Still there. As Moira always is, waiting. As if knowing now that she will return once the voices in her head have quieted. Once they have ceased their fight for dominance and found an equilibrium, one that leaves her more human than she is not once again. It takes her no encouragement to move nearer the hearth, golden eyes finding scarlet and blue. Less to find the knot in a silk tie, unwind it slowly and pull it free of the collar. To lean in close, all dark hair and damp silk and the scent of roses to whisper, " _Viens au lit, chérie_."  
** Come to bed, darling

There's no protest. There never is.

Later, she will lay awake in the dark as the moon casts its silvery light through the curtains. She will remember how it did in the chateau outside Toulouse. A soft white pillowcase blooming red at its centre like the roses in the bath. Soft blooms and gunpowder, the sharp tang of copper in the air. Love with a bullet. There is always a part of her that wonders at how easy it would be to do it again, watching sharp features peaceful in sleep, coppery lashes that flutter not far from her own, in the midst of a dream.

She could draw a hand through her dark hair, spilled like a river of silk upon the pillow, then take it up in slender, murderer's hands. Artist's hands. Press it down, all down and soft cotton onto that peaceful face, cast silver, its freckles pewter in the moonlight. Hold until the breath left the body beneath it. But she remembers roses and violin as easily as she does the rest. Standing in the Talon base when it all came rushing back, her face pressed in the collar of a white labcoat. It is different. It is the same.

She shifts subtly within the sheets, brushes a strand of coppery red hair from Moira's brow. The kiss she places there is soft, tender, finds the same place a bullet entered Gerard's skull.

_One shot, one kill._

It is not the death she wants today.

**Author's Note:**

> Poem in Chap 1 is Firefly by Philip Murray.


End file.
